


Into Ether

by cyranonic



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Dimitri's birthday, Hallucinations, Injury, M/M, Mid-Timeskip, Violence, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyranonic/pseuds/cyranonic
Summary: Five years gone. Five years older. Felix finally delivers a belated gift.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 34
Kudos: 111





	Into Ether

19.

Felix has been dreading the day. He has been ignoring it for several weeks with great determination. He has even gone so far as to petition his father to be sent out to muster more troops from the villages, but the Dukedom forces are too close and he must remain at the Fraldarius estate with his father. 

He awakens on the twentieth day of Ethereal Moon and he cannot ignore it any longer. 

Felix is used to counting the age of the dead, year by year, as they slip further and further away. He counts Glenn’s birthday silently each spring, imagining his brother even as the image of him grows misty and blurs in his memory. He knows that the first year is the hardest. With Glenn, it was a day of celebration turned horribly and crushingly into a memorial. 

On the twentieth of Ethereal Moon of the year 1181, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd would have turned nineteen years old. 

Felix lies under the blankets for a few moments longer than normal that morning. Ethereal Moon was cold at Garreg Mach, but it is brutal in Faerghus. The fire has been put out for the night and even with the thick stones of Fraldarius manor, his room is freezing. It seems fitting, in some way, for Dimitri to have been born in this savage, lifeless month. 

He would have been nineteen years old. 

Felix runs his hands through what remains of his hair at the thought. The sides are still roughly shorn and there is a bit of uneven growth at the nape of his neck now. 

The one blessing of this year is that Rodrigue has never mentioned it. When Felix emerged from his room a week after the messengers brought word of the prince’s execution, his hair sheared off into a pile on the floor beside his bed, Rodrigue Fraldarius simply informed him of the latest news from the warfront and asked if he could lead a scouting mission to the Ithan border.

As Felix lies in his bed, hands drawn up around his bare head for warmth, he recalls Dimitri’s eighteenth birthday, back at the Officers Academy. 

The professor had made it into something of an event, although it clearly embarrassed Dimitri to have so many people paying attention to him. There had been a tea, a house dinner, and a party in the evening where Sylvain had passed around a flask of spiced Dagdan rum. 

Felix had not attended the celebration. At the time he had simply told himself that the boar didn’t need anymore attention, that he would be placating a beast with foolish trinkets. There were enough people fawning over the prince. Felix would be neither missed nor did he want to attend. 

The next day, however, he had encountered Dimitri at the training grounds and shoved an envelope at him. 

“From my father,” Felix had said shortly as Dimitri caught the envelope with a startled look. 

“Felix,” Dimitri had said, sounding startled. “Thank you, I--” 

“It isn’t from me, boar,” Felix had interrupted. “Don’t you have enough gifts?” 

Dimitri’s expression had gone still. Silently, he tore the envelope open. There was a folded letter and a pair of black leather gloves, finely lined and tooled. A simple gift, and yet fit for a prince. 

“Felix, could you thank your father on my behalf if you encounter him before I do?” Dimitri had replied formally, tucking the letter into the pocket of his coat. “Perhaps I might return the favor in a few months with a gift to his son?” 

Felix had rolled his eyes. It was a convenient cover for how he could feel something hot pricking at them. 

Dimitri had always sent gifts when they were children, before he had changed. Before Felix had lost him to whatever that creature was who now wore his skin. 

“Pointless. You think I want a gift because, what, I survived another year?” Felix had said, spite and venom spilling out of him. “At least the gloves are pragmatic. I’ve seen your disgusting hands enough to know that.” 

Dimitri had flinched back. The gloves had slipped numbly from his gauntleted hand. They lay on the floor of the training grounds. 

He didn’t pick them up before his quick strides had carried him out of the room. Felix had left them there as he finished his set. 

And today, Felix thinks, Dimitri would have been nineteen, if he had actually survived another year. 

If he wasn’t lying headless and rotting in a cold pauper’s grave somewhere in Fhirdiad. If he hadn’t been dragged in chains to an execution block, lashes on his back still bleeding through his shirt. 

Felix feels his fists clench in what remains of his hair. 

He rolls out of bed, letting the freezing stone pressing against his bare feet drive all thoughts from his head. He dresses for battle and brings his sword with him when he goes to meet his father in the courtyard. Rodrigue is already in the saddle, preparing to ride out and meet a few of his officers in preparation for the potential battle to come.

“Are they close?” Felix asks, calling for his own horse. 

“Felix, you should rest a few more hours,” Rodrigue replies. “The Dukedom scouts haven’t made it to our border yet. Save your strength for if they attack the fort.” 

“You’re riding out,” Felix says with an accusatory glare. 

Rodrigue seems to have no answer for that. Felix mounts his horse and readjusts the blade in his scabbard. He wants it to taste blood today. Of all days, he wants to fight today. 

“Are you…?” Rodrigue begins to ask. His face looks grey from strain. His tone is dangerous, that saccharine too-caring voice that Felix cannot stand. “I know today is difficult.” 

“It’s just a day,” Felix snarls back, a warning. Rodrigue never heeds warnings. 

“He would have been nineteen,” the old man says softly. 

“Enough,” Felix says, so loudly that even the stablehand jumps. Rodrigue does not stop. 

“I know it hurts you, Felix, even if you aren’t ready to--” he begins. 

Felix spurs his horse forward. He leaves the courtyard at a gallop, heading for the fort. Rodrigue calls out something from behind him. A warning. It is a bitterly cold day. Felix has forgotten his gloves.

All the better, Felix thinks. All the better that the blood will run over his bare hands this time. 




He is too warm. That is part of the absurdity of it. He can see the lesions of frostbite beginning to bloom across his extremities, and yet he can feel his skin burning. 

It is Ethereal Moon. A dangerous time to sleep exposed, even if he wasn’t in the woods of northern Faerghus. Here, the cold is deadly. He wakes every hour when the painful chill grows too intense. There is a wound in his side that is infected. It is making him weak, making it hard to think. 

He is too weak to hunt anymore. There is little game and even less to be found in forage. His homeland can be a cruel place. The earth here withholds. 

_ Get up.  _

The voice is formless. It could be his father. Could be Glenn. He doesn’t want to open his eyes and see. 

_ Get up. Pathetic creature. Get up.  _

He whimpers once, in the back of his throat. Then he opens his eyes. He is lying in the shelter of a few pines. His side throbs and he can smell something rotten and foul there under his clothing. His mouth tastes of bile, but he doesn’t remember retching recently. Even then, there is nothing in his gut to give up. 

Slowly, he pushes himself to his hands and knees. He wants to lie down again, but he knows that if he lies down again he will die. If he rests here, he will die. The voice, whoever it is this time, is correct. He has to get up. 

He picks up the wooden javelin he has been sleeping curled around and uses it to help bear his weight when he stands. It is a crude weapon, wooden with an iron tip, stolen from another corpse the last time that Cornelia’s men had found him.

The outskirts of the city are only a few miles away. If he can make it there before his legs fail him, he can find a surgeon to do something about the infection. It is a risk, but no village healer will be able to do much about the gash in his side at this point. Besides, he thinks, he does not look much like himself anymore. 

_ Faster. _

This time, Dimitri catches a glimpse of his father through the trees. Before, he always tried to avert his gaze from the dead. He had worried what the other students would think if they caught him staring off at the empty air. Now, he looks without blinking.

_ Faster.  _ His father’s voice is a ragged whisper. He must be suffering greatly. 

“I’m trying,” Dimitri manages to reply as he limps. 

_ You have wasted another year. Faster.  _

The dead man draws closer through the trees. Dimitri moves faster. 

When he makes it to the slums across the river from the main rise of the city, he is so weak that he stumbles. His knees sink into the cold mud of the street and he slips a few times trying to rise again. There is a dark stain on the side of his shirt now, where the wound is. 

The surgeon’s quarters are marked with a red pole. This is no experienced healer from the palace or the monastery at Garreg Mach. This is a man who pulls teeth and stitches wounds and shaves faces all in the same chair. He might know enough of faith magic to close a gash, but not to do much more. 

“No,” the surgeon immediately says when he sees Dimitri on his doorstep. He taps a sign beside the door. “No charity. Payment only.” 

“I can pay,” Dimitri grits out. It is a lie. He has filled the purse he holds up with small stones near the river, a trick that normally a prince would never have learned. The surgeon is still frowning.

“Deserters aren’t wanted here,” the man finally says, taking in Dimitri’s filthy clothing. Even covered in mud, he must recognize the Dukedom uniform.

“I can pay,” Dimitri insists. He steps closer.

The surgeon backs up, allowing him in. He looks nervous, even though Dimitri is close to passing out where he stands.

When he lifts Dimitri’s shirt he recoils in disgust, but says nothing. 

“This is going to hurt,” he warns him before he presses a cloth soaked in some form of tincture onto the wound.

“Do it,” Dimitri growls back.

“If you hit me, I charge double,” the surgeon says, hesitating. 

Dimitri saying nothing but balls his hands into fists. 

“Today’s date,” the surgeon says. Dimitri looks at him in confusion. Maybe it is the fever. Things keep slipping out of his mind. 

“What?” He asks wearily. His body is tense and wound up as he keeps bracing for the pain. 

“To distract you,” the surgeon clarifies, “the date.” 

“Ethereal Moon,” Dimitri replies. “Late.” 

“Twentieth day,” the surgeon says as he presses the cloth into Dimitri’s side. 

He screams despite himself. 

The pain is unbearable, almost unreal. It seems impossible that cleaning a gash should hurt more than when it was first inflicted. 

The twentieth. Twenty days of Ethereal Moon. 

He is twenty years old today. At the Officers Academy, the professor had once referred to it as a golden birthday. 

As he howls and shakes, biting into his bottom lip until it bleeds to stop himself from drawing attention, his mind is suddenly filled with a barrage of images. 

His stepmother, holding him in her arms, helping him to unwrap a wooden carved soldier. His father, leading him to his first lesson with a blade when he was of age. Glenn, ruffling his hair and making some joke about how in another year he’d be bigger than the knights.

And Sylvain, who made every year an initiation into some new special club where they were the eldest. And Ingrid, who would stomp her foot and insist that she would be that old in only a few weeks. And Felix, who would inevitably start bawling because he hated to be left out, hated to be excluded, hated to be away from Dimitri and… 

He comes back to himself with blood dripping down his chin where his lip has split open. The surgeon’s hands are glowing faintly as he works to close up the gash now that he has cleaned it. He places a thick cloth pad over it, begins to wrap it around Dimitri’s bony torso. 

Dimitri is still shaking even though the pain has subsided greatly. 

“Well, you didn’t hit me,” the surgeon concedes. “Two hundred in Dukedom coin.” 

Dimitri throws him across the room in response. 

When he limps back onto the street, someone is already shouting for the guards. The surgeon regains consciousness faster than expected and Dimitri runs for the treeline before one of them can loose an arrow. 

The pain in his side is dull now. The fever isn’t gone yet, but once the infection leaves his blood, it will. He will live another year. 

_ Hurry.  _ His father’s voice murmurs as he crashes through trees. He can hear hounds behind him now. 

He remembers so well, the excitement each year of growing old, and therefore closer to the age when he could fight. 

At twenty years old, he turns to face the guards who have pursued him. It ought to be an easy match, but he is still so tired. He raises the wooden javelin too slowly in a block that should have been second-nature. 

The tip of the sword whips across his face and suddenly half of his vision is nothing but dark red. 

He presses a hand to his face as blood begins to pour over his cheek. He feels numb, shocked, unable to fully comprehend what has happened. Such a simple mistake. Only a fraction of a moment’s hesitation, and it is gone. 

He is twenty years old, alone in the forests north of Fhirdiad, and every year he loses more and more of himself. 




Dimitri sinks his teeth into warm venison on the evening of his twenty first birthday. He is content enough with the situation. The farmer whose barn he is sheltering in had thin, listless children and while it is clear that Dimitri has been poaching deer from the royal forest, the man will not ask questions. 

Besides, if he knew the truth, well, then he couldn't very well accuse the man sleeping in his barn of poaching. 

But tonight, Dimitri feels his blood singing. His scars ache in the cold and the pit where his eye once was sometimes grows dry and irritated in this weather. And yet he is alive. He is alive, and what is better, he is growing stronger. 

Distantly, he can hear the scouts from the Adrestian convoy on the road outside, the sound of hoofbeats pausing as they sight the little farm. 

“I could use a hot meal,” one of the soldiers jokes. His accent is West-Faerghus. A traitor then. 

“Leave the small holds alone,” another soldier replies, an Adrestian native. “They’ve barely got enough to sustain themselves this winter. No time to plant this year. Too many men taken for the war.” 

“Fraldarius is still fighting, though,” the first man argues, “and Gautier too. Look, there’s smoke from the chimney; they can’t be that destitute. Why don’t we requisition a little something for the war effort and remind these people what side of the border they’re on?” 

“The lieutenant is right behind us you idiot,” the other soldier retorts, “with the spoils from Fraldarius. If we don’t get them back to Fhirdiad fast for the Lady Regent, we’ll both go to the stocks. They say he’s been spotted in these woods, you know. The monster.” 

Dimitri feels his pulse begin to stutter. Spoils from Fraldarius? He can almost smell the revolting greed of these men. He swallows the last bloody mouthful of the venison and moves like a shadow to the door of the barn. His hands itch on the lance in his grip. 

He recalls the deer when it had died. The sound of panic that it had made. He imagines that sound coming from the mouths of these men and he smiles. 

“Peasant superstition,” the soldier laughs in his horrible West-Faerghan voice. “There’s nothing in these parts but woodcutters and goatherds, trust me. The lieutenant can back me up. He’s the one who gutted the Fraldarius whelp, anyways. If he thinks we should stop here, then we do.”

And just like that, Dimitri finds his resolve wavering. 

The Fraldarius whelp? They couldn't be referring to…? No, he would have heard. Someone would have brought news. 

More hoofbeats sound on the road. 

“All clear, sir!” the soldier shouts at the approaching convoy. 

Dimitri steps out from the barn.

They don’t recognize him. They never do for some reason. Perhaps it is the eye or his hair or his height. But the Adrestians he slaughters never recognize the prince of Faerghus. 

No, instead they always cry out that it is the monster, the beast, the fiend of the black forest. They cry out, worldless screams, like he is an animal rather than a man with whom they might beg for mercy. 

_ Boar.  _

That voice rings in his ears as he throws a man down from his horse. It is not one of the dead. It is not one of the ghosts who follow him. Felix is not--

He cannot be. 

He takes his time killing the lieutenant. The man is Adrestian by birth, a weak blooded southerner who weeps when Dimitri rips off his helmet. 

“Who did you steal it from?” Dimitri growls, his voice low and rough with disuse. 

The lieutenant sobs wordlessly, trying to scramble away. Dimitri presses the foot on his chest down harder. 

“In Fradarius,” Dimitri hisses. “Who did you murder for your spoils?” 

“I didn’t-- please, please,” the lieutenant moans, “I didn’t kill him, it was my men, it was a battle, please, I beg you--” 

“Who?” Dimitri rests the spear at his throat. 

“Sir Roland Fraldarius,” the lieutenant finally confesses, “he was at the fort, please, spare my life, spare my--”

Dimitri forces the spear the rest of the way to the ground dispassionately. He withdraws the weapon with a wet gasp from below him and then he goes to rip the cover from the wagon. 

The Blaiddyd arms are wrapped in oilskin cloth. They are blackened, coats of oil heated over the steel to keep them from rusting. A pragmatic choice. Dimitrri sheds his own leather pauldron and begins to fasten the pieces over his dirty black tunic. 

Behind him, the dying lieutenant gurgles. Wolves are howling in the forest. They will likely find the bodies here before the next Adrestian convoy. 

Dimitri pulls the straps tightly as he arms himself. He is growing stronger. He is surviving. 

As is Felix. Somewhere in Fraldairus territory, Felix is still fighting. 

It is the best gift he could imagine. 




Dimitri is so tired. He is walking through a forest in northern Rowe lands. At least, he thinks he is. He’s been walking for hours. 

The snow has fallen thick and it is still falling. Once the sun sets, it will be an icy, treacherous night. He hates to sleep without his armor these days, but unless he finds a secure place to build a fire, the cold metal will leave cruelly painful scars wherever it touches exposed skin for too long. He has learned that the hard way.

He learns everything the hard way, it seems. 

Dimitri is tired of winter. He is tired of Ethereal Moon, again, when the Adrestians retreat into their fortresses and towns and the campaigns grind to a halt. No one is desperate enough to try marching in the snow anymore, not even the Gautier raiders who sometimes plunder Dukedom caravans near the border. 

The war has gone on too long. It is not a stalemate, but a slow bleed. 

Dimitri is tired. 

He walks through the snowy pines, boots crunching over the new-fallen snow. It is still clean and white until he walks across it. His boots leave red-brown smears. Too easy for his trackers to find him like this, but there is nowhere safe to rest for the night and so he keeps walking. He thinks he might walk until dawn. 

He is tired of walking. 

An hour passes, or maybe only a few minutes. His eyes are fixed ahead. His spear drags behind him. He is already leaving tracks. Let the Adrestians whisper that the beast has a long tail in its wake this time. 

He nearly forgets to stop when he sees the light ahead. In the dim twilight, it stands out clearly, shining against the snow like a beacon. He ought to avoid it. 

But, he thinks, it could be soldiers. Traitors. Invaders. The servants of that woman, out in the open, exposed, a perfect opportunity. 

Dimitri draws his arm up and creeps closer. 

As he presses behind a tree to watch, what he finds instead is a small caravan. There are a few tents, two or three families struggling to light their own cookfires a few paces away. There is a handcart loaded with a small possessions. Odd things. What looks like a portrait covered in a leather satchel. A wooden idol of the goddess who stares lifelessly up at the sky with a benevolent smile. 

Heirlooms, Dimitri realizes. The treasures of families forced to flee from the warfront, who brought with them their sentimental fortunes. 

Dimitri begins to back away. There are children here, he realizes. One of the women struggling over her tinder has a babe strapped to his chest while another young girl, perhaps nine or ten years old, is sitting and swinging her feet on the edge of the cart. 

“Are you cold, stranger?” 

Dimitri nearly reacts instinctively and hurls his spear. As he jerks around he sees a man holding an armful of firewood behind him. He is middle-aged, with a thin freckled face and pale red hair, a sparse beard growing along his jawline. Not a soldier, Dimitri immediately assesses. 

He ought to run, he thinks. He ought to shove past the man and run until no one here would bother following him. 

He is cold. And he is tired. 

He nods. 

“I can offer a warm fire and a bit of broth,” the man says. His eyes are clearly scanning over Dimitri’s armor. 

Dimitri nods silently again. 

The man turns his back and walks to one of the fires on the edge of the camp to begin stacking his newly cut sticks over the flame in a lattice. Dimitri follows him slowly. He feels like he is wading through something thick and viscous with every step. 

“Where are you coming from, stranger?” the man asks, blowing on the flames as they begin to lick at the branches. The fire is small and smoky but Dimitri still finds himself creeping towards the warmth. 

“East,” Dimitri says. It is strange. His voice sounds different. He wonders how long it has been since he has spoken a word to anyone. 

“Ah, east,” the man nods. “Us as well. From Charon territory.” 

Dimitri says nothing. He holds his hands out to the flames. Even inside of his gloves, his fingers ache with the cold. 

“Were you in a battle, friend?” the man asks, his voice more gentle now. Dimitri knows it is clear that he was. There is no use lying. He nods his head again. 

“Battles are horrible things,” his companion continues, pulling out a flask and pouring it into a small pot he begins warming over the fire. “There is no shame in running from them.”

There is, Dimitri thinks, of course there is. 

“How old are you, friend?” the man asks. He is watching Dimitri carefully, although his tone is casual. 

“Twenty one,” Dimitri answers, then thinks better, “maybe twenty-two, now.” 

“My oldest boy,” the man says with a sad smile, “would have been just your age. He was killed in the fighting that first year of the troubles. Too young. We always trained our children to fight, but then we old men must see them die so young.” 

Dimitri does not feel young. He feels as old as the rocks beneath them. He huddles closer to the warmth and stays quiet. 

“It’s difficult for everyone now,” the man continues, as though they are having a conversation. As though Dimitri is speaking just by inching closer to the warmth of the flames. “The taxes on exports were so high this year, we all lost our farms. Everyone has their troubles, but that’s no reason not to try to help when we can.” 

Dimitri bites his bottom lip.

“Listen, friend, I know it isn’t my place to ask, but are you going somewhere?” the man asks, “or are you just walking?” 

Dimitri considers an answer. He decides that silence poses the safest path. 

“It’s alright, if you're not heading anywhere yet,” the man offers. “People tend not to know where they’re going these days. But I want you to remember that someone, somewhere is waiting for you. Might be family. Might be a friend. Might be the goddess up in the heavens. But someone is waiting for you to come home.” 

His family is waiting, Dimitri thinks. Waiting for him to finish what he promised. He’s kept them waiting for so long. They must be tired and cold. So tired and so cold. 

But out amongst the living? There is no one. There are only his enemies, waiting for him with baited traps. He has no home to return to, he has no country left to fight for, he has no--

But. 

But Felix is still fighting in Fraldarius. Felix is still fighting in Fraldaarius territory, and if he walked back there tonight and pledged to fight for his people again, they would take him. They would take him in and clothe him and feed him and arm him for battle. He could turn around and walk all the way back to Fraldarius territory and let himself finally be found. 

“I’m tired,” Dimitri finally rasps. 

“I can see that, friend,” the man whispers. “But just stay up long enough for the soup to get warm.” 

“I should keep walking,” Dimitri shakes his head. 

“You’ll freeze to death out there, my boy,” the man urges him. “Stay a while. Stay the night, at least. We have enough to share for now and you must be weary.” 

“I am…” Dimitri admits, shameful and shivering, “I am weary.” 

“Then rest,” the man says firmly. 

Somewhere to his right, a twig snaps. Dimitri raises his head at the sound. On a nearby hill, he spots a flash of red amid the trees. His eyes snap back to the man at the campfire. 

“You…” he growls. “You led them here.” 

As he stands, towering over the fire, his shadow looming against the nearby trees, the scrawny man looks even smaller as he scrambles back. 

“Please,” he begs, the charade collapsing at once and all the kindliness and steadiness melting away into pure panic. “They forced me, please, they said I had to keep you distracted, I never wanted to--” 

Dimitri hears the sound of an arrow passing over his shoulder. The woman with the baby screams in alarm and the infant begins to wail. 

Rage floods over him, then, and worse than that, humiliation. He had sat there at the fire and waited patiently for his enemies to ambush him. 

_ No more waiting,  _ his stepmother’s voice begs him as the blood begins to pound in his ears.  _ No more weakness, my son, no more stalling.  _

With a wordless roar, he seizes the man by the throat, holding his body as a makeshift shield. An Adresian arrow hits the man in the thigh and he screams, his cry muffled by Dimitri’s fingers. 

Useless, then, to leave him alive. Dimitri squeezes harder. He feels the man’s neck break in his grip and the panicked thrashing grows slack. Dimitri grins to himself. Another traitor dead, then. A fitting tribute to the dead he has neglected tonight. 

A shriek interrupts his thoughts. It is the girl, the one who had been sitting on the wagon, swinging her feet. She has lank reddish hair and freckles. The child runs towards him with no regard for the Adrestian archers still hidden in the woods. 

“Papa,” she cries, throwing herself down where he has dropped the man’s corpse. “Papa, no!” 

An arrow hits his pauldron and barely deflects away. Dimitri stands frozen for a second, staring down at the girl who is no longer sobbing. She is screaming. Tears are running down her face and she is screaming. 

He staggers back a few feet. And then he runs. 

He runs until he cannot keep the pace up. He kills two of the archers when they give chase, but his ghosts do not show any sign of relief. He cannot hear them now. All he can hear is the screams of that girl, clutching at the body of her father. 

When dawn finally breaks, he collapses. There is no control. His legs simply will not carry him further. He collapses beside a low bank and shudders. 

He does not cry anymore. He shed all of the tears he thinks he was capable of during those first few months alone. Now, he just lies there and makes a low keening cry in the back of his throat. He keeps his lips closed. He reaches his hands into his hair. 

The child screams and screams. He killed her father. She’d already lost a brother, if the man was to be believed. Hasn’t he done enough damage? Hasn’t he killed enough of fathers and brothers? How many more will be required of him? 

He lies gasping in the snow as it falls on top of him, the horrible sound pressing at his lips and threatening to spill out. He can still hear the child shrieking, as though she were right beside him. 

He cannot go back now. Not to Fraldarius, certainly. There is no one waiting for him there. There is no home to return to. 




He does not recall the twentieth of Ethereal Moon in the year of 1185. At some point, he recalls that he had made his way back into the monastery, hunting for rats. 

But the date itself passed without his notice. 




At the king’s birthday celebration in the year of 1186, there is one notable absence. 

That being, of course, the king. 

The palace staff has spent weeks preparing a feast and a ball and a grand entertainment for the many guests, but the king is nowhere to be found after a brief and slightly shaky appearance at dinner. 

Naturally, as the king’s chief advisor, the task falls to Felix to track the man down before the courtiers start to gossip and Annette starts to panic that her surprise performance of the Fhirdiad School of Sorcery faculty choir is ruined. 

The king is neither in his chambers nor is he anywhere to be found in the ballroom and so Felix ventures out into the bitter cold of a night in Fhirdiad to search the grounds. 

He finds Dimitri in his usual place, keeping his vigil in the small private chapel built to house the remains of the ancient kings. A few candles are lit on the altar, but they only serve to magnify Dimitri’s shadow against the wall. 

“You’ve been gone for forty minutes,” Felix informs him bluntly as Dimitri’s head turns at his footsteps. “Dedue is considering sending out a rescue party.” 

“I apologize,” Dimitri says quietly. 

It is freezing in the chapel with no fire to warm the high ceilings and the tall glass windows which let the heat leech out. 

“We should go back,” Felix adds when Dimitri doesn’t move. His back is turned and his hands appear clasped in front of him, as though in prayer. His hair has been neatly trimmed to the collar of his cloak. Felix has been growing his out. 

“Back. Of course,” Dimitri says. He still doesn’t move. 

Felix watches him from afar. Things are still strange between them. The years of distance are not so easily bridged with a few months of fighting side by side. 

But, Felix has made his choice. He has chosen Dimitri. He has chosen Dimitri by his own free will: Dimitri as he is and not as he was. And even if a gulf of years now yawns between them, Felix is certain he will overcome it. It is strange to feel so confident and so centered about anything amidst all of the chaos of war and hard-earned peace and a world forged anew. 

“You never cared for your birthday much,” Felix finally observes in the quiet of the chapel by night. “Even before the war.” 

“It’s just surviving another year,” Dimitri says faintly. “What is there to celebrate?”

Felix clears his throat. He clears it again for good measure. 

“I got you something,” he finally manages to say. 

“Please, Felix,” Dimitri whispers, sounding oddly heartbroken, “you didn’t have to do that.” 

“Just accept it,” Felix says sharply. “This is my gift. At least do me the honor of accepting.” 

Dimitri finally turns around to face him. His face is ashy and pale. His eye is rimmed slightly with red. 

Felix steps forward and holds out a pair of black leather gloves. 

“Here,” he says firmly. “It’s freezing. Put them on.” 

Dimitri stares down at the pair of gloves like he’s been struck by lightning. Felix feels his face growing hot. 

“Felix…” Dimitri murmurs. 

“I should have given these back to you a long time ago,” Felix admits in a sudden rush. “I bought them. Dimitri. I bought them for your eighteenth birthday, but I couldn’t say it. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t say it. And then every year when I thought you were-- every year I thought about it.”

Dimitri’s eye widens in shock. He begins shaking his head for some reason. 

“I’m sorry,” he says nonsensically, “I know my hands are unpleasant to see.” 

“That’s not…” Felix makes an inarticulate sound of anger directly at himself. “This is… something to protect you.” 

The admission makes Dimitri open his mouth to protest again. 

But before Dimirti can say something else foolish, Felix reaches out and grabs him by the wrist. His hands are bare and icy cold. They are large, scarred, the knuckles swollen and crooked in places where they have been broken. He holds Dimitri’s palm between his own, warming it as much as he can before he slides the glove over it. 

Dimitri’s fingers tremble under his touch. Felix cannot think about what he is doing or else he will lose his nerve. He takes Dimitri’s other hand and twines their fingers together. He runs his fingers over Dimitri’s scars, a gesture that he hopes can make the confessions his tongue cannot. The calloused pads of his fingers are rough although his touch is light. Felix wraps their hands together and squeezes until he can feel the heat beginning to come back to Dimitri's hand. 

They stand there together for several minutes. 

“I can’t face them,” Dimitri finally says. “Not after what I’ve done, Felix, please, send my apologies, but I cannot go back in there.” 

“You can,” Felix says firmly. “You don’t have to wait in the cold any longer. Come inside with me.”

“It’s a foolish celebration,” Dimitri says. 

Felix feels his flush turn even deeper red as he presses one of Dimitri’s cold hands to his lips quickly. Then he slides the other glove on. 

“How could it be foolish to celebrate?” Felix asks him, putting all the ferocity he can muster into the words. “When you’ve survived another year?”

“Another year,” Dimitri repeats numbly. 

“And then another after that,” Felix says, pulling him back towards the lights.

Dimitri nods and smiles with a hint of melancholy. 

"I suppose I will grow old." 

"Please," Felix manages to beg him. "Please do." 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday, Dimitri. come chat with me @cyranonic on twitter about sad birthdays.


End file.
